1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a music selection apparatus. More specifically, the present invention relates to an automatic accompaniment apparatus used in an electronic musical apparatus for selecting desired music data among diverse music data that have been prepared and stored in advance.
2. Related Arts
In general, as a part of operations employed with a musical apparatus to select a desired music style for playing or reproduction, following the entry of an instruction using number keys, a series of style names are displayed in accordance with a record sequence that has been specified in advance. Thereafter, when a desired style name appears on a screen, a user can select the style by manipulating a decision switch. However, since individual styles are usually sorted to specific genres, and each style is recorded and stored in a memory area allocated for its assigned genre, a desired style cannot be selected until the genre to which the desired style has been sorted is displayed. In this case, only after a genre has been designated, style names that belong to the designated genre are displayed sequentially, thereby searching sequentially from the first one to the last one among the styles that were recorded in the designated genre.
Occasionally, some styles should belong to more than one genre. Even in such a case, the conventional music apparatus records each style at a memory location allotted to only one of the associated genres. Therefore, when a user wishes to select a desired style that belongs to a plurality of genres, in order to search for the desired style, the user must request that all the possibly applicable genres be displayed. For example, assuming that the style "JAZZ WALTZ" belonging to both the jazz genre and the waltz genre is recorded only in a memory area of the waltz genre, a user who desires to select this style must request the display of both the jazz genre and the waltz genre, and must complete the search of the jazz genre before beginning to search the waltz genre. Otherwise, the user must designate likely ones of the genres to be searched. Assuming that the "JAZZ WALTZ" style is recorded in the waltz genre area, when the user requests that the jazz genre be displayed first as the most likely one, the user could not find the target style. Only after the user has completed the search of the jazz genre, he or she will have to enter a second request for the display of the waltz genre as a next likely one. Thus, regardless of which method is used, the genre selection procedure tends to be repeated, and the work that must be performed before the desired style is found is trying and tedious.